A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

§ 21. The Earlier Gnostics: Gnosticism in General 91numerous fragments from Gnostic writings. The fragments in theante-Nicene Fathers may be found in A. Hilgenfeld, op. cit., inGreek, with commentary. For the literary remains of Gnosticism,see Krüger, §§ 22-31. The more accessible are: Acts of Thomas(best Greek text by Bonnet, Leipsic, 1903, German translationwith excellent commentary in E. Hennecke, NeutestamentlicheApokryphen, Tübingen and Leipsic, 1904); Ptolemæus, Epistleto Flora (in Epiphanius, Panarion, Hær. XXXIII); Hymn of theSoul, from the Acts of Thomas (text and English translation byBevan in Text and Studies, V, 3, Cambridge, 1897, also translatedin F. C. Burkitt, Early Eastern Christianity, N. Y., 1904).(a) Tertullian, De Præscriptione Hæreticorum, 7. (MSL, 2:21.)A wide-spread opinion that Gnosticism was fundamentally aperversion of Christianity finds its most striking expressionin the phrase of Harnack that it was “the acute secularizingor Hellenizing of Christianity” (History of Dogma, English [078]translation, I, 226). The foundation for this representationis the later Gnosticism, which took over many Christian andGreek elements, and the opinion of Tertullian that Gnosticismand Greek philosophy discussed the same questions and heldthe same opinions. (Cf. the thesis of Hippolytus in his Philosophumena,or the Refutation of All Heresies; see the Proemium,ANF, V, 9 f., and especially bk. VII.) Tertullian, althoughretaining unconsciously the impress of his former Stoicism,was violently opposed to philosophy, and in his denunciationof heresy felt that it was a powerful argument against theGnostics to show similarities between their teaching and theGreek philosophy he so heartily detested. It is a brilliant workand may be taken as a fair specimen of Tertullian's style.These are the doctrines of men and of demons born of the spiritof this world's wisdom, for itching ears; and the Lord, callingthis foolishness, chose the foolish things of this world to the